Review of Azumi (2003) by Albo L — 14 Aug 2009

A good action movie that aimed higher but ultimately failed to deliver substantially more than just the fighting sequences and pretty interesting story.

The main character - Azumi is an orphan trained to be a ruthless killer along with a group of others like her. Over time they all become friends but assasins are not allowed to let emotions jeopardize their assignments. They are ordered to make groups of two with the person they like the most by their master, then they face their first trial, only one of two can live. The surviving group are ready to complete the mission they were trained for, preventing war... by all means neccessary. Ultimately that means the young assasins are to kill any war hungry lords.

So, in my opinion the sketch for the plot is pretty good and interesting, the realization however is a different matter. Visually Azumi is quite nice, it has the manga feeling about it. When it comes to characters they are pretty uneven, some are pretty well developed, some not so much. Same with the acting, for me the biggest issue was the fact that while action wise the actress playing Azumi was satisfying, her acting outside the fighting scenes is not good enough and makes the main character not entirely convincing.

About the fighting sequences, which these kinds of movies are all about, they are pretty violent and bloody. We have some slow mode shots and a few interesting camera angles. Definetly a plus for the movie. However, when it comes to the realism of the fights you will feel like watching an anime movie, so not everyone might enjoy them.

In a movie that centers so much on one character it's a big flaw for him to be unconvincing, there are better developed and more lively characters in the movie than Azumi. The story is pretty nice however some unrealistic fighting sequences and cheesy, semi-funny scenes and characters push the whole movie towards a live action anime instead of a bloody samurai flick. I have a feeling the whole movie could have been a bit darker...

In the end you get a pretty decent visually action movie with a few interesting characters as well as a coherent and entertaining story which is only directed at the fans of the genre. Enjoyed it myself but I feel like it's true potential was a bit wasted, this could have been an epic return of samurai movies.